Ever wanted to pretend like you live in Manhattan? Or are you in the city for a long work trip? Or perhaps you’re simply a New Yorker stuck in a tiny apartment who wants to experience a night or two outside of cramped quarters? For any of these cases, the Q&A Hotel may be perfect for you. Located in the Financial District, this residential hotel is actually a converted apartment building, so each suite is a massive, fully furnished studio, 1 bedroom, or even 2 bedroom space that was originally intended for long-term living. You still get most of the amenities you would expect from a hotel like housekeeping, toiletries, and complimentary WiFi, but in a space that’s almost twice as big as a lot of the small hotel rooms in Manhattan with the added bonus of a fully equipped kitchen.
Unlike other hotel “kitchens” that might have a mini fridge and hot plate, the suites at the Q&A hotel all have a range of kitchen tools, kitchen island with a sink, stove, oven, and full-sized refrigerator with a freezer. We took advantage of this by picking up freezer bags and a pie from the Artichoke Pizza at the City Acres Market located just below Q&A Hotel, freezing all of the slices to bring back to Hong Kong with us. Highly recommended if you want to take a slice of NYC home! Having the market below is also highly convenient for your stay, as it has both a full grocery with fresh produce and food vendors like Vanessa’s Dumpling House and the aforementioned Artichoke Pizza.
If you plan to stay in NYC for a while, having the full kitchen is a great option if you decide to cook some of your meals, which may be especially handy if you’re doing a long work trip or traveling with children. The hotel also has Blue Park Kitchen downstairs for an easy fast casual option for healthier bowls for when you don’t feel like cooking.
We stayed in an Executive Studio Apartment with a seriously comfortable king-sized bed that had a cool headboard with built-in side tables and USB outlets on both sides. There was also a seating area with a full couch and coffee table facing the television, L’Occitane products in the sizeable bathroom with a bathtub and two shower heads(!), and a reading nook with a desk at the entrance of the suite. We loved the modern style and unique design elements of the space – it actually gave us apartment envy! Our only gripes were that the TV faced the couch rather than the bed, so if you want to watch in bed you’ll have to turn the TV. There was also a lack of a full-length mirror, and I would’ve loved a bathrobe.
Finding the hotel lobby will feel a bit strange as you navigate through a larger lobby for the apartments and offices that take up the other floors of the building. But once you arrive at the hotel lobby, you’ll be greeted by their friendly 24/7 front desk to get the keys to your apartment.
In terms of the location, the Q&A Hotel is around the corner from the Wall Street 2 3 subway station, and five blocks from the 2 3 Fulton Street subway entrance, which connects to the larger Fulton Center/Oculus transit hub that houses almost all of the train lines that run from Manhattan into Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, as well as connection to the PATH train to New Jersey. This makes it very convenient if you plan to visit other areas in the city, or if you plan to take mass transit to fly out of Newark Airport. If you want to explore downtown Manhattan, then you’ll be walking distance to all of the major sights like Wall Street, the World Trade Center, South Street Seaport, Battery Park, and the Manhattan pedestrian entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge.
Overall, we really enjoyed our stay at the Q&A Hotel. It made us feel like we were living in Manhattan again, except with a nicer space. The location was also very convenient with access to so many subway lines, and being able to freeze Artichoke Pizza to bring back with us was icing on the cake.
If you plan to book a stay at the Q&A Hotel, you can use my promo code INDULGE to receive a voucher for a free bowl at Blue Park Kitchen with a stay at the hotel (one voucher per registered guest).
